Touhou Kishinjou (Shining Needle Castle) ~ Double Dealing Character (東方輝針城 ～ Double Dealing Character) is the fourteenth official game of the Touhou Project. It was announced by ZUN on his personal blog on May 11, 2013.[1] A playable demo containing the first three stages was released on May 26, 2013, at Reitaisai 10. The full game was released on August 12, 2013, at Comiket 84.

It is the first game in the series to be made available for digital download, through Playism. This release is also the first available in western territories, though it is untranslated from the original Japanese.

The three main playable characters are Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, and Sakuya Izayoi, each of which have two different shot types. Like with recent previous games, lives and bombs are gained piece by piece. The player requires 3 life pieces to gain an extra life. 8 bomb pieces grants the player an additional bomb, and this amount never changes. Bosses may also drop bomb or life pieces.

The major new gameplay mechanic is a simple upgrade to the Item Get auto-collection system. When you auto-collect, either by passing the Item Get Border Line, using a bomb, or reaching/defeating a boss, you will get bonus points and resource pieces based on the amount of power and point items auto-collected within a certain timing window. You get bomb pieces at 20 items and life pieces at 60, though every fifth bomb piece is replaced with another life piece.

Returning from Ten Desires is Spell Practice mode, as well as the ability to unlock a stage for Practice mode simply by reaching it. Not returning is having to beat Normal difficulty to unlock the Extra Stage.

Story

Youkai are rebelling, and tsukumogami are turning up; no one knows what's happening, clouds are gathering, and a strong wind carries the sounds of a huge building. Gensokyo is full of the sounds of dissonance. The individual weapons of the three protagonists are starting to act oddly. It's their job to either take their weapons in hand and fight the youkai, or to cast their weapons aside.

Press

Double Dealing Character was first announced on ZUN's personal blog on May 11, 2013, along with a short explanation of the gameplay, confirmation on the playable characters and five in-development screenshots. It also included a basic story outline.[1] On July 19, 2013, ZUN updated his blog announcing that the web demo was available for download in the official Team Shanghai Alice page with minor bug fixes along with a short intro story.

In his original blog announcement, ZUN stated that the resolution of the game would be doubled from 640×480 to 1280×960. He also said that the game was being developed to be resolution-independent, but that those with higher-end computers would be able to enjoy the higher resolution.

Four days after the release of the full game at Comiket 84, ZUN released a v1.00b patch to fix bugs, such as the crash that happened with certain characters after stage 4.

On August 10, 2014, both ZUN and Playism confirmed a digital download for the game, available on the site of Playism.[2][3]

On April 7, 2015, Playism announced that it would bring the game to western territories.[4] The release date was later announced for May 7.[5]

Music

Double Dealing Character has a total of 17 tracks composed by ZUN, with seven stage and seven boss themes, a title screen theme, an ending theme and a staff roll theme. A hidden track 18 is the new Player's Score theme from Fairy Wars.